Letters to Harry
by kach-noona
Summary: This story is being written as a response to JKR's comment in an interview where she said that Dudley was changed for the better through the Dementor attack and would awkwardly reunite with Harry. A series of awkward letters, reunions, and vignettes portraying forgiveness, healing, and redemption between two members of one family.


__**Letters to Harry  
**

a harry potter fanfic

_by baroquesoul_

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_"There's a real moral cowardice to Draco. But is he wholly bad? Absolutely not." Same with Dudley, whom Rowling imagined would have awkward reunions with Harry over the years. "I've never been asked that either!" Rowling said when a 16-year-old 12th-grader wondered if the two would ever see each other again. "Harry and Dudley would still see each other enough to be on Christmas-card terms, but they would visit more out of a sense of duty and sit in silence so that their children could see their cousins." Which means Dudley actually gets to the point where someone besides his parents would find him lovable "People usually ask me, what is it that Dudley saw during the Dementor attack?" Rowling said. "My feeling is that he saw himself, exactly for what he was, and for a boy that spoiled, it would be terrifying. So he was jolted out of it. Dementor attacks aren't usually good for people, but this one was." (Rowling, Q&A Session at Carnegie Hall 19 October 2007)_

**Introduction: **A series of awkward letters, reunions, and vignettes portraying forgiveness, healing, and redemption between two members of one family.

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**Letter 1**

-x-x-x-x-x-

22 December 1999

Dear Harry,

Took me a while to figure out what your address was. Luckily I remembered that old lady who used to take care of you – Mrs. Figg. Turns out that she's one of your kind, isn't she? Or something like that. Always thought she was a weird one, what with her cats and all.

Anyways I had to wrangle it out from her – the address, I mean. She was convinced that I was going to send you something nasty or whatever. But I wouldn't do that. Well, not anymore.

I'm not quite sure how to express it fully in words. But, Harry, I'm truly sorry for what I did to you when we were kids. I should have known better, but Mum and Dad weren't much help, what with the egging me on and your punishments. I guess I really believed that you were a freak and that you deserved everything we did to you. But I was wrong - we were all wrong, completely wrong.

But I didn't figure that out, that bullying and torturing you was wrong, 'till I got in trouble my last year at Smeltings. You weren't around then, but I hurt a kid real bad. I just got mad at him for no reason, he was bugging me or something, and I beat him worse than I ever beat you. Broke his arm, a leg, and a couple of ribs. One of the teachers caught me in the act, and it wasn't one of the ones Dad was chums with. So they hauled me to the headmaster's office, expelled me, and packed me off to one of the Young Offenders' Institutions.

I was there for a while and it was there that I finally realized that my behavior and my parents' behavior wasn't normal or okay. Or more like the therapist repeatedly beat it into my thick head. Anyways, I learned that you're not supposed to lock up a kid for being freaky or starve him or assign him so many chores that he can't even go outside and play or let your son beat him up on a daily basis. And it took me a while to get it, but I finally understood. The therapist and I became good friends, by the way. He's a great guy and a better dad figure to me than my dad ever was, really.

Well, Mum was crying when I went there and crying when I got out. She blubbered about how wrong the school was to lock me up. And Dad was angry too. But I knew they were wrong and for the first time, it made me sick how every time I did something, they told me that it was right and okay, no matter who got hurt or how bad. I yelled at them too and they were pretty shocked. They didn't seem to understand when I told them that they were awful people for mistreating you - did you know that it's called child abuse and that it's a crime? I told them they should've gone to jail, and now that they didn't, they ought to go to hell. Mum starting crying and wailing about how the detention center "corrupted" me and Dad just got so red in the face and boiling mad that he hit me. And I finally felt how you must have felt for all those years we did all those horrible things to you. Anyway, he managed to hit me hard enough that I was knocked onto the ground and Mum was screaming and I got so hurt and angry and fed up.

So I left home. I ran into the house and packed clothes, shoes, and some money I had left over from the time my "friends" and I robbed a store. I called it getting some money for a good time, but it was stealing. And it made me sick to take it, but I was actually thinking for once and realized that I needed some money or else I'd be on the streets groveling. I had my therapist's phone number and I called him. He helped me out a lot, actually. I lived with him and his wife for several months and I got into a sixth-form, passed some GCSEs, and now I'm at university with a job on the side. It's amazing when I think about it. It was tough to be in the detention center, and tougher to leave home, but I'm actually happy with how my life is turning out.

I'm awful sorry for everything I ever did to you, Harry. And I understand if you don't want to write back to me or anything. I just hope that you read this and see that I have sort of turned my life around.

Happy holidays.

Sincerely,

Dudley

P.S. I gave the stolen money to charity.

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**Notes: **Future chapters may contain more than one letter as well as snapshots of Harry and Dudley's lives. It is probably slightly divergent from Rowling's head canon, in regards to Dudley, but it is canon-compliant with DH. The Epilogue hasn't happened yet, obviously, but this fic will be compliant with that as well. Dudley is expelled in 1997 and attends university starting in 1998. As for my attempts in portraying the British juvenile court system and education, well, all of my knowledge comes from Wikipedia and various other online sources. If you see a mistake, please let me know and I will be happy to fix it. Hope you enjoyed this first chapter! Constructive criticism and compliments are happily accepted. I'd love to hear what you think.


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